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No Fox Required

THE horse trailers start arriving early on the expansive front lawn of the John Jay Homestead here. By 7:30 riders are mounted and milling, handing in cards, tying on numbers. Some are dressed for a cattle drive, others as if to go hill-topping with the Queen. The horses range from painted ponies and barn nags to hulking hunters and sleek thoroughbreds. The crisp fall air is full of anticipation as riders form into teams of two or three or four. Stirrups and chin straps are tested; girths are cinched one last time. At the start gate, an official with a stopwatch and clipboard says, ''You may leave when ready.''

Then, at a walk, trot, canter, whatever the riders decide, the teams set off on a 12-mile course of groomed forest trails and open fields. Spring water, sherry or Gatorade is served at rest stops along the way. The route is marked with big bright arrows and riddled with 80 to 90 jumps. You can either take them or go around. It won't affect your score. All that matters is matching the ideal time, which is unknown to the contestants.

The sport is hunter pacing, a relatively new competition rapidly coming into its own in the horse country of Westchester. Just as baseball evolved from cricket and football sprang fully helmeted from rugby, hunter pacing took the best elements of foxhunting, steeple chase and point-to-point, stripped away the formalities, threw in a dash of Lotto, Laredo and motor cross, and boiled it down to an American original that is threatening to overshadow its roots.

With rolling hills and stone walls reminiscent of England, this part of Westchester is the heart of New York horse country. From dressage rings with mirrored walls and chandeliers to the most modest backyard paddocks on an acre or two, horses dot the landscape. Networks of trails, carriage paths and dirt roads with yellow horse-crossing signs, keep the area horse friendly. When the people move in, the horses move out, the saying here goes. Many residents credit the area's horsey tradition with preserving its rural character and keeping real estate values high. Horses still have the right of way on all roads.

With no umbrella body of governance or nationwide sanctioning, the hunter-pace formula has been adopted and freely modified by trail organizations as a convenient fund-raising tool. On any given weekend in the fall, there are two to three choices of paces in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, according to Lindie Scorsone, president of the Windy Hollow Hunt of Greenville.

With other equestrian sports like eventing and showing, Ms. Scorsone said: ''You sit around all day to compete for five minutes in the ring. With pacing, you go for an hour and a half through pretty countryside.''

An average day of showing can cost $500, said Carol Bancel of the Bedford Riding Lanes, figuring in braiding, grooming, regalia, fees and travel. A pace is about $80 and it includes lunch.

Hunter pacing was started in Virginia 42 years ago by Alexander Mackay-Smith, who was Master of Foxhounds of the Blue Ridge Hunt in Millwood, Va. Mr. Mackay-Smith's widow, Marilyn, recalled that at the end of the 1959 hunting season her husband said: '' 'Here we have all of these hunters fit and ready to go. What could we do with them?' People didn't want to go in horse shows where you rode alone.

''He woke one morning with this brainwave and put it into fruition,'' said Mrs. Mackay-Smith.

The original course was five miles long, with numerous jumps and two compulsory checkpoints where riders had to stop and hold for 15 minutes, mimicking the ''checking'' of hounds that have lost the scent of a fox and need to be recast to find a new one.

''It's foxhunting without hounds or prey,'' said Ronnie Stewart, secretary-treasurer of the Masters of Fox Hounds Association in Millwood, Va. ''People need a reason to run fast.''

ONCE the course is set, an experienced rider, either the day before the pace or early the same morning, secretly runs the route at a lively but sensible rate, as if keeping up with a pack of hounds on a run. That rider's time is the optimum. The closest to it wins. To keep the speedy contingent happy, Mr. Mackay-Smith's original plan also included a prize for the overall fastest time.

Mr. Mackay-Smith's day job was editor of The Chronicle of the Horse, the equine world's must-read weekly. He had long used his bully pulpit to foster a long list of associations that sponsor riding activities. The United States Combined Training Association, United States Pony Club, North American Riding for the Handicapped Association and the American Academy of Equine Art, all got a leg up from Mr. Mackay-Smith, according to Peter Winants, former director of the National Sporting Library in Middleburg, Va., which Mr. Mackay-Smith also founded.

But there is no United States Hunter-Pace Association. One reason may be that the sport hasn't seemed to need one. Almost as soon as Mr. Mackay-Smith described his invention in the pages of The Chronicle, hunts all over the country began to adapt the formula to their tastes and terrain.

The sport first came to this area in the late 1960's, but they were loosely organized informal affairs, said one of the founders, Fred Nives, who, at 81, still paces regularly.

Foxhunt clubs saw paces as a way to show off trails and entice new members. ''Instead of interesting people in hunting, they invented a whole new sport,'' said Caroll Bancel, who organizes the two annual paces held by the Bedford Riding Lanes Association, a nonprofit, volunteer conservation group that maintains the 200-mile network of historic riding trails in Bedford and Pound Ridge.

''You can get more people out to pace than you can to foxhunt,'' said Lisa Smith, a foxhunter who is organizing the Stone Valley Hounds Hunter Pace scheduled for Nov. 17 in Hyde Park. ''It's become more popular than foxhunting.''

Heidi Sweet, a director of the Goldens Bridge Hounds, whose pace is scheduled for today, called pacing ''a blast.'' If there is any resentment or feeling of rivalry from the foxhunting community, she said, it is probably because of the constraints of available leisure time. Foxhunting is done Saturday mornings, pacing on Sundays.

''People leave the hunt field early to save their horses for the paces the next day,'' she said.

Ms. Sweet and Ms. Smith both say that foxhunting suffers from an image problem. ''People still think we go out and kill a fox,'' Ms. Smith said. ''Which is not the case at all.''

Unlike in England, where fox hunting is a blood sport in which hounds go for a kill, the American hunt is an elaborate excuse to ride hard through glorious countrysides. American hounds are trained to put up a loud cry and run after the fox, but it is only a chase. Still, stigmas are hard to shake.

Ms. Sweet added, ''Let's face it, there are more people out there who want to stop foxhunting than there are people who want to do foxhunting.''

Both sports are difficult to watch. From the original formula of the Blue Ridge Hunt, courses were stretched from five miles to upward of 15. Veterinarians were stationed at checkpoints to make sure horses were not being pushed too hard. Tailgating lunches evolved into catered table-clothed buffets under tents. People began to attend just to dine and mingle.

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The Bedford Riding Lanes fall pace was booked solid three days before the September event, Mrs. Bancel said. Mrs. Bancel had sent out 2,500 fliers in midsummer, and the 130 starting slots were filled with teams coming from as far as Albany, Hartford, New Jersey and Long Island.

Entrants included a firefighter and a truck driver from Eastchester (who as a team have been three-time champions in the western division), and a piano teacher from Connecticut, a brain surgeon and a state police officer, a blacksmith, a plethora of investment bankers and lawyers, stable hands and caterers, a sculptor, an artist, schoolteachers, two movie stars' wives, and a grandmother who flew in from California and borrowed a horse so that she could ride with her daughter and granddaughter. The grandmother hadn't been on a horse in 12 years, but she took all 85 jumps.

''This is not a snooty event,'' Mrs. Bancel said. ''It is very ecumenical. It's come as you are. To be a part of it you don't need a fancy horse or an Hermès saddle.''

The first team was sent off at 7:47 a.m., then every two to three minutes after that. In lieu of a vet check, the pace included four mandatory walk stretches where riders had to give their horses a breather, said Bob Torre, the association's president.

By noon, 294 riders in four classes had embarked on the course and for the next hour and a half horses and riders trickled in to the finish line, crossing Route 22 with the help of a pair of police officers, entering the John Jay Homestead estate and taking (or not taking) the final jump while a small crowd of spectators sat on the hillside and politely applauded.

Mrs. Bancel said no one was sure of the precise distance of the course this year. ''Six to ten miles,'' she said with a shrug.

But there was no fudging with the optimum time, which this year, again experimenting with the formula, the association set by averaging the times of two separate teams: 1 hour, 11 minutes and 8 seconds.

The first-place finishers, Shelly Miller and Debbie Schwartz, were nine seconds under. The second place finishers were 11 seconds shy, and the third place team 18 seconds too fast. The fifth place team finished 25 seconds over the ideal time.

Mrs. Bancel, who has been running the Bedford pace for 10 years, said that in the early days she used to dread announcing the winners. Their process for computing the times was confusing and prone to error.

''If anyone challenged anything, we'd just call it a tie,'' she said. ''There were a lot of ties.''

For this year's event, her husband, Chris, who designs databases for insurance companies, has created a spreadsheet program for the event that gives instantaneous elapsed times and difference from the ideal. He managed everything from his laptop sitting in his minivan at the finish line. Runners still had to deliver cards with times from the start box. ''It's the best of manual and digital worlds,'' Mr. Bancel said.

Ribbons go to the top 10 finishers in each division: Hunt (the fastest), Western, Pleasure and Junior. Area foxhunts and trail associations have banded together to create series of paces with overall prizes for the top finishers for a season.

The affiliated hunts include Goldens Bridge, Old Chatham, Windy Hollow, Millbrook, Fairfield, Rombout, Smithtown and Stone Valley. The Associated Bridle Trails series started with Bedford and ran through October at Putnam, Lewisboro and in Connecticut at Middlebury, Greenwich and Newtown.

''Many people only hunter pace because you get to ride in different places,'' said Mr. Stewart. ''When you hunt, you basically go over the same land twice a week.''

PACES are now a fund-raiser. Ms. Scorsone said it took about $90,000 a year to keep a foxhunting organization going. The six paces they hold annually, she said, ''help keep dues down.'' Windy Hollow has 105 members, 40 of whom are social, not riders. Riding members pay $1,225 a year, which cover a little more half the group's budget. The rest comes from fund-raisers like the annual ball, silent auctions and the paces.

Mrs. Bancel said that the Bedford pace makes about $20,000, but only because members regularly pick up various fixed expenses. The tents cost $3,000, the trophies and ribbons $1,000. Then there are parking attendants, off-duty police officers and food servers to hire. Another board member in the food business takes care of the lunch at cost or below. ''Members have been propping his enterprise up right from the beginning,'' said Mrs. Bancel.

Without the John Jay Homestead, she said, it would not be possible. There is no other site in the area big enough to handle all the trucks and trailers, she explained. The 200-mile network of the Bedford Riding Lanes has skirted the John Jay estate for years and just recently was given a ribbon of land for a trail around the perimeter of the estate, which is one of only five of the founding fathers' homes still standing.

The riding association had to persuade the state landmarks and parks commission to allow it to use the estate. The group made the point that having a horse-related event was in keeping with the land's history. The Jays were avid equestrians. The young James Fenimore Cooper arrived here by horse to listen to old Judge Jay's spy stories from the Revolutionary War. In a garden on the north side of the house, there is a tombstone marking the grave of Old Fred, the horse that carried Col. William Jay through the battles of Gettysburg and Appomattox.

The last team to go out that day from John Jay Homestead was a middle-aged couple from Millbrook, which also happened to be holding a hunter pace. But that pace was too long, 12 miles, and their young horses were antsy thoroughbreds fresh off the track. That pace might be too rough for them. So they had gone down to do the Bedford pace instead.

''Americans are much more respectful of riding,'' said Sarah Kowitz, a volunteer who was officiating at the start line. ''In England, you just get thrown on to a horse in a field and you're left to it.

''Hunter pace was a particularly American invention,'' she said. ''And rather nice.''

Where to Ride

The remaining hunter pace events in the area are Goldens Bridge (today), the Smithtown Hunt (next Sunday) and the Stone Valley Hounds (Nov. 17) where the overall trophies and ribbons will be awarded. Information: www.AdjacentHunts.com.